A Friend in Need

And I know confidence is a big part of being great at something. Think about something that you're already really good at doing. Maybe you're really good at using the spreadsheet program on your computer. Well, now focus on one particular part of that program, maybe making charts. Now, get as great at making charts as you possibly can. Watch a bunch of YouTube videos and read everything you can find online about it. I RECENTLY WENT on vacation, and when I got back to work, I discovered that my Getaway colleagues had special-ordered a large jigsaw puzzle featuring a goofy photo of me. Sometimes I'll see a few of my coworkers hovering over it, fitting pieces together while having a sidebar conversation. It's been coming together pretty slowly--most of it is still in pieces--though unsurprisingly, my colleagues managed to assemble the Jon section of the puzzle right away. You might not know it from the puzzle in our office, but the first jigsaw puzzles were prized as educational tools. In 1766, the English mapmaker and engraver John Spilsbury glued a map of Europe onto a wooden board, then cut out the shape of each country. Teachers used Spilsbury's multipiece map for geography lessons, with their students learning the location of each country by fitting the pieces back together. By the early twentieth century, jigsaw puzzles had become a popular pastime for adults as well as children. During the Great Depression, many turned to puzzles as an inexpensive source of entertainment, a way to feel a degree of escapism and accomplishment during hard times. By 1933, people were buying puzzles at the incredible rate of ten million per week. While we don't exactly have the same level of puzzle fever a century later, the jigsaw remains a timeless source of entertainment: a low-cost investment that can keep individuals and groups occupied for hours, days, and even weeks. Music provides social cement--think of work and war songs, lullabies, and national anthems. He suggested that music stimulates emotional circuits in the brain[34] and releases oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, which can enhance bonding, trust, and relationships. Music was used to assist patients with severe brain injuries in recalling personal memories. The music helped the patients to reconnect to memories they previously could not access.

Based on the concept of entrainment, which means your brain picks up the rhythm of your environment, you can manipulate your mind with the music you choose. In a fascinating study, research subjects rated Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos. Beethoven's piece did the opposite. According to research published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, you can improve your mood and boost your overall happiness in just two weeks, simply by having the intention of being happier and by listening to specific mood-boosting music, such as Aaron Copland's Rodeo, for 12 minutes a day. Listening to happy instrumental music (versus music with lyrics) was more powerful in activating the limbic or emotional circuits of the brain. Create your own emotional rescue playlist to boost your mood quickly. We are then dominated by one side of the brain or the other. We either ignore our feelings, or we become over-whelmed by our feelings and cannot think straight, so we just react. The cranial nerves originate in the brain stem. The brain stem is directly involved in the management of our neurological system and is concerned with basic survival (it regulates our heartbeat and digestive system, for instance) and is not subject to our will or consciousness. It controls stress and relaxation, from a fast heartbeat to fatigue after a long, hard day. The brain stem does not differentiate between the hemispheres; It works along the lines of in/out. Accordingly, it controls our food intake, digestion, and elimination, as well as heartbeat and bowel movements. There is no left-right principle here, that only begins in the midbrain. Therefore the forward and backward movements that we use in the basic method act on the brain stem and midbrain. If the strict tenets of any given religion are absolutely right, then all the others must be absolutely wrong. One way or another, at least some massively large groups of people agree about what isn't true. But when large numbers of scientists begin with science, and apply sense, and then agree - it means something else entirely. Then, solidarity and consensus are worthy companions to science and sense, and the trifecta - science, sense, and consensus - is the best approximation of truth we mortals may hope to know.

Eat mostly unprocessed or minimally-processed vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds - with or without modest additions of anything else - in any balanced, sensible arrangement, and when you're thirsty, drink plain water usually, or always. These are the fundamental truths of diet and health that are copiously supported by basic, mechanistic studies in cell culture and test tubes. These are the fundamental truths copiously supported by observational studies, intervention studies, randomized controlled trials, and the experience of whole populations over lifetimes and generations. There is a bit more to the whole truth. Diets that would best improve health in developed countries may not address the truth about global hunger. We produce enough food to feed the world, but food waste, bureaucratic inefficiencies, civil unrest, and climate change, among other forces, all conspire to generate overt starvation, malnutrition, food insecurity, and global obesity in toxic combination. Practice this to the point where you're an absolute pro at it and you can make great charts every time. What you're getting from this exercise is the training to be consistently great at everything you put your mind to. And once you've done it on a small scale, you're ready to do it on a much bigger scale. The fourth trait associated with the championship mind-set is faith. Now, when I'm talking about faith, I'm not talking about showing up at your place of worship once a week and going through the motions. I'm talking about a deep, intimate, and unfaltering faith. To me, faith is believing the odds are beatable even when the odds seem impossible. When circumstances are stacked against you, when people are stacked against you, when even you are stacked against you, you still believe that you can accomplish what you want to accomplish because you believe that much in what you're trying to accomplish. That's true faith. Faith is believing a door is going to open that doesn't even currently exist. Teaming up to put a puzzle together is an easy way to build camaraderie among friends, family, or colleagues. It's also great for our brains, since it gives both hemispheres a workout at the same time. The analytical left hemisphere uses sequencing and logic to sort through the different shapes and colors, while the creative right hemisphere uses intuition to see the big picture. When both sides of the brain are engaged, our neural network builds new connections across hemispheres, which helps to improve our memory and cognition.

And each time we fit a correct piece into the puzzle, we activate our brain's reward network, which can in turn increase our concentration, confidence, and motor skills. Whether you're piecing together a map of the world or a goofy photo of a colleague, working on a jigsaw puzzle is a great way to give your mind a break from its everyday concerns while strengthening your brainpower at the same time. IN 2016, an American named Noel Santillan became briefly famous in Iceland when the GPS in his rental car led him very far astray. Instead of directing Santillan to his hotel in Reykjavik, about forty minutes' drive from the airport, the device led the twenty-eight-year-old tourist on a six-hour, 250-mile journey to the opposite end of the country. The error stemmed from a minor typo: instead of entering his destination as Laugavegur, the name of a popular shopping street in downtown Reykjavik, Santillan had typed Laugarvegur, which turned out to be a road in the remote northern fishing village of Siglufjordhur. Santillan didn't seem too bothered by his very long detour. Research shows it can be effective to start with musical pieces you love. If you're not sure where to start, try some of these pieces, which have been shown through research to boost mood: The brain senses the world. If you can change the inputs, you can often quickly change how you feel. Hearing: As we have just seen, music can help to optimize your state of being. Touch: Positive touch is powerful. Getting a hug, a massage, acupuncture, or acupressure or spending time in a sauna can improve mood. Massage has been shown to improve pain, mood, and anxiety in fibromyalgia patients; Sight: Soothing images can impact your mood. In one study, people who looked at real plants or posters of plants experienced less stress while waiting for medical procedures. The simple act of moving forward to the sound source or away from it has a physiological effect on the brain stem that is relaxing. And through this, the areas of the brain that follow in the chain of events get a chance to take hold and to plug into the action again. These movements, especially when performed barefoot, have an especially relaxing effect on the physical level. On the soles of our feet there are many reflex points, each communicating holographically with certain regions in the rest of the body.

By walking barefoot, these areas get stimulated. This makes use of foot zone reflex massage, but you can also experience this with a simple massage of the feet. Follow these step-by-step instructions: Massage both of your feet, or have someone massage your feet. Knead the feet with gentle pressure and strokes, thereby achieving a sense of relaxation. You can take a warm foot bath before massaging. This is not the particular truth about food emphasized throughout this article - but it is certainly part of the whole truth about food. The concentration of food production power in the hands of the few conspires against social justice. The democratization of food production - effectively eliminating the unnecessary divide between food supply and food demand - has the potential to advance both health and social justice. This, too, is part of the whole truth about food. There is no such thing as health promoting dietary patterns that are not sustainable; We could eat and perhaps benefit from such diets now, but the lack of sustainability means that our children and grandchildren could not. Does anyone think we should be engaging in any activity now that contributes to our health directly at the expense of the health of our own progeny? Does any parent think we should eat our children's food? The particular emphasis of this article is mostly on the truths that directly address the scourges of chronic disease and premature death in developed countries that have food choices and make bad ones. Calling the article the truth about food relevant to the burdens of chronic disease and premature death in developed countries that have good choices but routinely make bad ones seemed rather inelegant. It required real faith for me to step into the life I have now. Football was over for me (though I wasn't entirely ready to admit it), and I'd started doing the RehabTime videos. But the problem was that I didn't have much of a following, and it stayed that way for a little while. I had a strong sense of faith in what I was doing because I could feel that this was my purpose and because the people I'd been able to touch were genuinely moved by what I was saying.